2023 was the hottest year on record and 2024 could be even worse, scientists warn. In Brazil, we are experiencing first-hand the extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent as a result of global warming. While the state of Rio Grande do Sul is still suffering from the effects of the historic floods of recent months, the drought and fires in the wetlands of Pantanal have come early and could surpass the catastrophic year of 2020, when a third of the biome was lost to forest fires.
“The super-rich are burning our world,” warns Oxfam in its latest climate report, “Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99%”. It is more urgent than ever to build a socialist alternative to reverse the rampant destruction imposed by the capitalist system, which puts profit before life and nature.
A World on Fire
The 12 months up to May were the hottest on record, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change monitoring programme. The average for June 2023-May 2024 was 1.63°C above the pre-industrial average. The sea temperature also had a sequence of 14 months of record temperatures up to May.
This rise in temperature increases extreme events, as warmer air can carry more moisture. This means heavier rainfall, but also more severe droughts.
Hurricane Beryl, which killed 11 people last week, was the first to reach category 4 in June, well before the peak of the North Atlantic hurricane season, which is from August to October.
The oceans are also going through their fourth global wave of coral bleaching, the second in the last decade, with the possibility of it being the worst event yet. This has major consequences for marine life, as coral reefs are nurseries for many species of fish and other marine life.
1,301 people died between 14–19 June from the heat in Saudi Arabia during the hajj, the annual pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca, with temperatures exceeding 50 degrees in the shade.
India is also suffering from extreme heat which arrived earlier in the year. At least 121 people died in a trampling incident during a religious event in the state of Uttar Pradesh on 2 July. The venue was overcrowded, with people desperately seeking shade in the intense heat. Towards the end of the event, a panic broke out as people tried to leave in search of relief and water. A study in India shows that there is an average temperature difference of 7.6°C between those who live in informal housing and those who live in formal housing, a difference that can mean life or death. This is because of the material used to build the shacks, such as metal roofs, lack of ventilation, not to mention air conditioning, lack of vegetation, which helps to cool the environment, etc.
Earlier this year, we also saw the deaths of 741 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan because of floods. Meanwhile, the drought in central Chile has lasted more than 13 years, the longest in a thousand years, leading to a serious water crisis.
Studies show that between 2010 and 2020, mortality due to floods, droughts and storms in Africa, South Asia, Latin America and small island countries such as the Caribbean and the Pacific was 15 times higher than in rich countries.
Effects in Brazil
Extreme events in Brazil, whether heatwaves, droughts or extreme rainfall, have become more frequent in this context. The floods in Rio Grande do Sul were the biggest climate catastrophe in the state’s history. There were 173 deaths, 442,000 people had to leave their homes and a total of 2.3 million people were affected. 478 of Rio Grande do Sul’s 497 municipalities were hit by floods, dam breaches and landslides.
The wildfires in the Pantanal started early, recording the worst first half of the year in the last 26 years, when measurements began. The figures surpassed the same period in 2020, which saw the worst fires in the historical series and destroyed a third of the biome.
Marina Silva, the environment minister, stated that 85 per cent of the fires affecting the Pantanal are on private land, indicating that they are caused intentionally. The Pantanal is the largest continental wetland in the world, but it has been drying out. The wetland area was 61 per cent below its average size in 2023 and the situation worsened in 2024. The region’s main river, the Paraguay, is 68 per cent below the level expected for the season.
The Cerrado, a tropical savannah which is the country’s second largest biome, has suffered greatly from deforestation and is the main frontier for agribusiness expansion. The Cerrado is now experiencing its worst drought in 700 years, according to a study by the University of São Paulo, increasing the risk of desertification.
The authorities are also warning of a new severe drought in the Amazon. Last year the rivers reached their lowest levels since measurements began in 1902, when 500,000 people were affected. Levels have not recovered since then and rainfall has been lower than expected. This could affect supplies to isolated communities where rivers are the only means of transport. According to a study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), the probability of meteorological drought in the Amazon has increased tenfold, while the probability of agricultural drought has increased 30-fold. According to a study published in the scientific journal Nature, 10 to 47 per cent of the Amazon rainforest, home to 10 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity, is at risk of becoming a savannah by 2050.
Climate change exacerbates food price crisis
Climate change is having a serious effect on food production, pushing up food prices. In Argentina, last year’s soya and wheat harvest halved because of the drought and this year is still unlikely to fully recover. Olive oil production in Spain, the world’s largest producer, fell by half last year, more than doubling prices.
In Africa, agricultural productivity has fallen by 34 per cent since the early 1960s, largely due to climate change. Lake Chad, one of Africa’s largest lakes, has lost 90 per cent of its surface since the 1960s due to climate change, diversion of water for irrigation and population pressure, affecting the 30 million people who live in the region.
While 783 million people go hungry in the world, the world’s food billionaires increased their wealth by 45 per cent between 2020 and 2021, according to Oxfam. Food giant Cargill saw a 63 per cent increase in profits, earning almost $5 billion, the highest profit in the company’s 158 years.
Who’s to blame
Climate change is becoming increasingly evident and hard to deny. A Datafolha poll released on 2 July showed that 97% of the population in Brazil say they perceive the effects of climate change.
That’s why the main narrative of Brazilian big business, constantly repeated in the mainstream media, is not to deny the problem (as many on the far right do), but to say that we are all to blame and that everyone has to do their bit. If everyone recycles, takes shorter showers and thinks about how to reduce their carbon footprint, we can save the planet.
Although these measures are important, they will have a marginal effect, since the big problem comes from the production of large companies, the predatory extraction of natural resources, and the giant consumption of the super-rich.
According to the Oxfam report, in 2019, the richest 1% were responsible for the same level of pollutant emissions as 66% of the world’s population, or 5 billion people. “The people, companies and countries with the most wealth are destroying the world with their huge carbon emissions. At the same time, people living in poverty, suffering marginalisation and the countries of the Global South are the most affected,” says the report.
An Oxfam analysis of 125 billionaires in 2022 found that each one of them, largely because of their investments, was responsible on average for a million times more pollutant emissions than the average person in the poorest 90 per cent of humanity.
Another study shows that just 100 companies in the fossil sector (oil, coal and gas) have been responsible for 71 per cent of coal emissions into the atmosphere since 1998. These are highly profitable companies with enormous political power.
The 700 largest companies in the world made an annual profit of more than 1 trillion dollars in 2020 and 2021, profiting from rising prices and interest rates. Of these, 45 companies (6 per cent of companies) in the energy sector profited 237 billion dollars (24 per cent of the total) on average each of those years.
False transition and greenwashing
Despite much talk of a “green transition” at events like the COPs, investments in fossil fuels continue unabated.
According to the report “Banking on climate chaos”, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuel extraction to the tune of $6.9 trillion in the eight years since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.
The fight against the exploitation of new sources of oil, which in addition to increasing greenhouse gas emissions threatens the environment, remains central. In Ecuador, 59 per cent of voters approved a proposal to stop oil extraction in the Yasuní National Park in a referendum in August 2023, a protected area in the Amazon, after a long struggle by the indigenous peoples. They were given a year to dismantle the facilities, but billionaire president Daniel Noboa doesn’t seem interested in meeting the deadline.
In Brazil, President Lula once again defended oil exploration in the region at the mouth of the Amazon River, which has so far been blocked by Ibama, the state agency for environmental protection. “But we’re not going to throw away any opportunity to make this country grow,” he said at an event with Arab businessmen in June. Brazil is currently ranked eighth in the world in oil production. In March 2023, Alexandre Silveira, Minister of Mines and Energy, announced plans to scale up national production and make Brazil the fourth largest global producer.
This supposed contradiction between environmental preservation and social progress is false. When the pre-salt oil reserves (very deep reserves under the ocean floor) were discovered, they were pitched as the solution for social investments, such as education and health, but that was not realised. Now it is said that it is necessary to explore the “new pre-salt”.
What we have seen is huge sums being paid out to shareholders in the form of dividends, while Brazil continues to be a country with a low level of investment where deindustrialisation continues. The country remains trapped in the neo-colonial logic of supplying raw materials to rich countries. To break with this logic, it would be necessary to confront big national and international capital, something that Lula is unwilling to do. Instead, he is trying to reach an agreement and conciliate with the growing appetite and economic power of these sectors, such as the powerful rural caucus in the congress, which received the biggest plan of credits to agrobusiness in history, to the detriment of health, education or salary increases for underpaid civil servants.
The logic of the market, where profit is the driving force, is that if there is no profit to be made, there is no investment. If there is profit, investment is chaotic and unplanned, and those who suffer again are the workers, the poor and the environment, even in the name of saving nature.
Now look at the race to expand renewable energy production. At an event in Saudi Arabia in November 2023, Lula said: “In ten years’ time the world will say that if Saudi Arabia is the most important country in oil and gas production, Brazil will be called the Saudi Arabia of green, renewable energy.”
Indeed, Brazil has great potential and is now the fourth largest producer of wind energy, after China, the USA and Germany. But the way in which this rapid expansion is taking place is having major negative effects, especially in the north-east. Wind farms are often installed close to people’s homes, which are affected by the constant noise, jeopardising their health. According to MapBiomas, deforestation is also taking place in the Cerrado and Caatinga biomes to build wind farms.
According to Aneel, the national energy agency, 488 wind farms with 4,830 towers are planned in the state of Rio Grande do Norte alone, along with the installation of 531 solar farms. The wind farms built by August 2023 alone already cover 262,000 hectares, equivalent to 5% of the territory of the state.
A movement, the Movement of People Affected by Renewables, was founded to fight for the establishment of wind and solar farms that do not harm the population and the environment, an important initiative.
COPs — greenwashing travelling circus
The COPs, the UN climate summits, have proved totally incapable of bringing about any substantial change. If governments do not already represent the interests of big business enough, companies participate directly as sponsors or even as delegates, to stop any commitment that threatens their profits.
COP24 in Poland in 2018 had the coal industry as its main sponsor. At COP26 in Scotland in 2021, the fossil fuel industry had 500 delegates. After the large protests at this COP, where ISA had an important presence, the following COPs were held in countries where protests are banned. COP27 was in Egypt and COP28 was in Dubai, a major oil producer! This year’s COP29 will be held in Azerbaijan, also a country with an authoritarian regime and one of the cradles of the oil industry. Gas and oil production account for half of the country’s GDP and more than 90 per cent of its exports. The Baku region, the capital of the country where the COP will be held, is the “most ecologically devastated area in the world”, according to local scientists.
Next year’s COP30 will take place in Belém in the Amazon region in Brazil, where the host will be PSOL mayor Edmilson Rodrigues. This will not change the character of the event as an expensive festival that will not lead to real change. The hope lies in the protests and the gathering of movements, which must strengthen the unity of the struggle of indigenous peoples, social movements, trade unions and left-wing parties in a struggle that confronts the interests of big business and the capitalist system head-on, and defends a socialist alternative.
Who pays for the transition
Part of the Paris Agreement was the promise of a fund to help poor countries with the energy transition and to deal with the effects of climate change. But very little has actually been delivered, especially when compared to the trillions transferred to companies that extract fossil fuels, to bail out banks and big companies in crises, the profits of these same companies, or the increase in military spending and wars around the world.
Meanwhile, the exploitation of poor countries continues to be far greater than any aid. In 2021, African countries spent 236 times more on servicing foreign debts than on climate adaptation.
Any climate justice will only be possible with the cancellation of the foreign debts of poor countries and a reversal of the neo-colonial and imperialist logic. This requires building a coordinated international struggle involving workers from all over the world.
Deepening inter-imperialist competition and neo-colonialism
There are those who hoped that green transition investments would open up a new path for economic growth, a new golden age. What we actually see is how the “green transition” has become yet another element in deepening the competition and protectionism between the two imperialist blocs led by the US and China. This conflict includes the race to secure mineral reserves important for new technologies, aggravating the exploitation of poor countries.
China produces 60 per cent and processes 90 per cent of “rare earth” minerals. Chinese companies also control 80 per cent of cobalt production in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 74 per cent of the world’s production comes from. This ore is used in the production of rechargeable batteries. Congo suffers from constant armed conflicts and according to the UN, 40,000 children work in the cobalt mines in Katanga province alone, in hazardous conditions.
Lithium is a key element in the production of all types of batteries and control of reserves is strategic. Today, 88 per cent of production is concentrated in Australia, Chile and China. However, the largest reserve in the world is in Bolivia, which has 25 per cent of known reserves. Production is still low in the country, but recently Bolivia’s state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Boliviano (YLB) signed a contract with Chinese and Russian companies to build factories in the country, which has the potential to make the country the largest producer in the world. This caught the attention of the US. General Laura Richardson, head of the US Southern Command, warned that China “continues to expand its economic, diplomatic, technological, informational and military influence in Latin America and the Caribbean” during a presentation before the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee in March.
In May 2020, Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest people, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it”. The threat was a response to a post sent to the billionaire about his interest in preventing former Bolivian president Evo Morales from remaining in power. It may sound like bravado, but the dispute over resources is for real, as shown by the trillions the US has spent on wars in the Middle East for control of oil.
Wars and huge military spending are the greatest expression of the destructive nature of this system. The aggravation of inter-imperialist disputes has increased the risk of wars. The year 2023 was the year with the most armed conflicts in the world. There were 59 conflicts involving 90 countries, including the wars in Ukraine and on Gaza.
There is also a growing dispute over markets for end products. China produces 80 per cent of solar panels, 60 per cent of electric cars and 80 per cent of the batteries for these cars.
Biden’s response to US imperialism has been to launch huge public investment packages, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act worth over 400 billion dollars, but also to increase protectionism. In May, Biden announced an increase in import tariffs on electric cars from China from 25 per cent to 100 per cent. On 4 July, the European Union also implemented new tariffs on electric cars from China, reaching 38%.
The market is no solution
All attempts to solve environmental problems through the market only exacerbate the problem, since the market is predatory by its very nature. For every public investment package that opens up to the market, we see an agglomeration of vulture companies.
The “carbon market” and other similar plans don’t solve the problem. They are a way of allowing big companies to continue polluting, usually on top of a neo-colonial and extremely corrupt relationship with poor countries, such as when they pay not to cut down a forest, which shouldn’t be done anyway, or for reforestation plans that are often non-existent.
The handling of climate catastrophes is also very revealing. In the Rio Grande do Sul floods we saw the effects of years of deregulation of environmental laws and cutbacks to investment in prevention. Immediate measures to save people, care for them, feed them and provide shelter were carried out mostly by volunteers and partly by the public sector. To the extent that private companies had anything to offer, it was by profiting from the huge demand for water, food and equipment.
But worse than that, disasters are used to promote the interests of big business. The mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo (MDB), hired a US consultancy firm, Alvarez & Marsal, to help plan the reconstruction of the city. This company was notorious for its role after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in the USA in 2005. It helped implement a plan to privatise healthcare and schools. 7,000 teachers were sacked and the number of public schools fell from 123 to 4. In addition, a gentrification plan was implemented that expelled a large part of the city’s black and poor population. We shouldn’t expect anything better this time round.
In the initial moment of great national commotion, everything is promised. But experience shows that we shouldn’t expect governments to actually implement the necessary measures, as they aren’t prepared to take the resources away from the rich, big business and the banks. In addition, the construction industry is notoriously corrupt and inefficient, but profitable. In 2011, torrential rains led to landslides that left more than 900 dead in Petrópolis (RJ). People are still waiting for new homes more than a decade later. Two years after the tragedy of the rains with 133 deaths in Pernambuco, more than 2,000 people still haven’t returned home.
That’s why it’s important to have democratic control of donations and resources for reconstruction, through residents’ committees, trade unions and social movements. Reconstruction must be carried out by public companies, expropriating the big contractors under democratic workers’ control and management.
Democratic planning
It will only be possible to tackle the gigantic challenges posed by climate change by completely breaking with the logic of the market economy. Today, production is geared towards generating profits for a small elite. Much of this production is done to fulfil a manufactured, unnecessary, harmful or quickly discarded demand, with luxury goods, exaggerated consumerism, programmed obsolescence, or worse, the huge expenditure on weapons of destruction.
It will be necessary to put all resources to work to adapt society to the changes that have already taken place and begin to restore the damage. This can be done if society’s resources are put towards meeting real social and environmental needs.
Natural resources such as minerals, water and native vegetation should not be at the service of private exploitation for profit, but should be seen as common goods that should be extracted as little as possible and reused as much as possible. Today’s rubbish dumps and oceans are full of plastic and other waste, because it’s cheaper to manufacture new products than to recycle.
But it’s not enough for resources to be controlled by state-owned companies that operate according to market logic, like Petrobras, the Brazilian oil giant. State companies need to be placed under the democratic control and management of the workers and incorporated into a democratic planning of the economy. This goes for the big companies in other sectors that control the economy and consume huge resources, which would also need to be part of a democratic plan: the transport sector, agribusiness, construction, the giants of the consumer sector, be it electronic products, household appliances, furniture, food and others.
By nationalising the big companies, along with the financial sector and banks, it will be possible to break the logic of the market and the power of the small elite who today impose their interests on the rest of the population. Then production can begin to be geared towards the needs of the vast majority, and our knowledge, technologies and common goods can be used to begin to repair the damage that centuries of capitalism has done to the planet.
